Just a place to share some thoughts

Day: March 29, 2012

If you’re fortunate enough to have access to YouTube in your school, you know that you’ve got access to many, many videos that can certainly engage, excite, and motivate the students in your class. The biggest challenge is finding videos that are worthwhile and suitable for your specific purpose. There are so many great resources but there are some that just don’t make it.

Finding these resources are easier with the advent of the YouTube Education Channel. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of content there as I’ve written about earlier in this blog. But, how about the really, really, really good stuff. TEDx good.

Even looking through the TEDx resource looking for the best can be tedious. Good tedious, to be sure, because you’ll see such great content.

This channel provides access to some of the very best. At present, there are five categories: Awesome Nature, How Things Work, Playing with Language, Questions No One (Yet) Knows the Answer To, and Inventions That Shaped History. In these categories, as they sit, you’ll see some of the very best educational videos of quality.

As with any video that you’ll find on YouTube, the related videos can be a terrific launching pad to more great content.

You won’t find at 22 second quickies here. It’s the content that we’ve come accustomed to with TEDx videos but specially curated for education. If you have access to YouTube, you need to take a good long look at what’s available.

Whether you love ‘em, hate ‘em, or fall somewhere in between, PowerPoint presentations have become something of a staple in every teacher’s bag of technology tricks. Some of us create our own PowerPoints to present curriculum content, some of us have our students create them to show they’ve learned the curriculum content, and some of us do a little of each.

By dissecting a cockroach … yes, live on stage … TED Fellow and neuroscientist Greg Gage shows how brains receive and deliver electric impulses — and how legs can respond. (Launching a series on Awesome Nature)

Google is awesome. Yes, there have been questions raised about its new privacy policy and creepy Safari tracking and frankly, it just knows way too much about everyone who has ever created a Google account. But let’s put that aside for a moment and focus on all its cool quirks, shall we?
They’re built into practically every Google product — if you look hard enough, you’ll find that entering the right search term or typing a code can make Google collapse, spin or create fictional characters. Here are 15 easter eggs (hidden, entertaining things developers build into a website or program) for you to discover the next time you’re Googling.

Technological innovation accounted for almost half of U.S. economic growth over the past 50 years, but the country’s standing as the world’s indisputable innovation leader is now at risk. In December, China surpassed the United States as the leading global patent filer — the first time any country has overtaken America.

Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tami, Chief of Dubai Police, has spoken out against the use of Twitter to criticize the UAE government, calling for legal action to be taken against offenders, Gulf News reports.

Referring to the recent criticism of the UAE government by the country’s tweeting Muslim Brotherhood, Tamim said, “I call on the country’s top member of the judiciary to take legal action against that faction of tweeters, who abused our nation and leaders.”

These pages are intended to stimulate critical thought and discussion about Information and Communication Technology, and whether it is enabling a social movement. Perhaps we could start this discussion with a consideration of what literacy means today, and how the choices we make in tools, and policies we use to govern practice with those tools, affect those have on the development of that literacy.

Twenty-four percent of K-12 schools ban cell phones altogether, and 62 percent allow phones on school grounds but ban them in the classroom, according to the most recent national data available. But it’s about time for those schools to rethink those bans, said Kevin M. Thomas, assistant professor of education at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY, who spoke at the 67th ASCD Annual Conference & Exhibit in Philadelphia this weekend.

Screensharing is an important part of being able to hold business meetings from remote locations, and most of the services out there cost money and require annoying software installation. Google+ Hangouts recently got screen sharing as a feature, but it requires everyone to be signed up, logged in, and on the platform.

Out of 125 responses from teachers indicating their top 3 apps, these are the apps that were listed most often.

Over the last few weeks, we ran a survey asking teachers to tell us about two or three of their favorite iPad apps that they use in an education-related context. Today we share the apps that were listed most often, and include some feedback from teachers regarding why they like them so much.

Hojoki is a new service I just learned about from the Hojoki team. It’s a very cool idea – it takes all of your online productivity apps and turns them into a newsfeed and collaborative space to work on projects.

Three Ring is a new free service offering free Android and iPhone apps for digitizing and organizing student work. Using the app teachers can take a picture of a student’s work and upload it to a free Three Ring account. Three Ring offers teachers a lot of organizational flexibility. You could organize artifacts by student name, class, date, or just about any other tagging system that works for you.